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Given the importance of the Hispanic vote and the massive bump in polling Trump achieved among Republicans from being loudly and proudly racist, that the first words that might be called an attack on this yammering gasbag come from Rick “Niggerhead” Perry is curious, indeed.
One notices that NONE of the other candidates (Perry included) has flatly rejected Trump’s hatesac bullshit, nor have they, en masse or individually, repudiated Trump himself.
The point being that they are not in this instance and given this opportunity standing on anything even distantly orbiting principle to say, “Fuck off, you racist piece of shit.”
This has nothing to do with treating Trump with respect and/or following Reagan’s advice not to attack within the party. The clowns are all torn between pandering to the Hispanic vote (and thus alienating the Republican base which consists of angry xenophobes) or pandering to the angry xenophobes (and thus further pissing off the Hispanics while appearing to support the blithering fucking moron Trump who’s kicking them in the cajones over immigration).
If this is a trap, Trump is far smarter than I credit…or far dumber.
This shit really is destroying the GOP’s ability to run any sort of campaign that has a snowball’s chance in hell of winning.
The best part is that it truly reveals the nature and quality of the Republican party. If they weren’t a cobbled together alliance of various and sundry species of retarded, pandering, mendacious, sub-human hate based scum, Trump’s ignorant blather wouldn’t pose any problem. That they are frozen like deer in the headlights tells anyone all they need to know about the GOP.

And so now, various “serious Republicans” are mulling over ways they might keep Donald Trump out of the debates. They realize he’s a destructive clown and they need some way to cut loose of him. As you read this article, you can hear the sound of Teapublican heads exploding from Bangor to Laredo – sounds like vandals have gotten into the bubble wrap factory.

After reading the bit, I wandered into the comment section. If you want chilling proof of the sucking mental vacuum that is the Republican base, I DARE you to scroll through it yourself. You should consider that both an invitation and a threat.

After what seemed an eternity of reading the dumbest fucking things ever cobbled together out of the 26 poor, abused letters of the alphabet, I left the following:

It took a long time but I managed to read through the majority of the comments in this thread.
As depressing and frightening as it is to realize what stunted, ignorant, hatesac racism and delusional fever dreams drive you pathetic, unread, semi-literate assholes, there’s a bright silver lining: no candidate who says the things that reflect your schizophrenic fantasies could ever be elected president.
The lot of you are too fkn stupid to ever glimpse the near edge of how stupid you are. You toss around words like socialist, communist and fascist without having the foggiest first clue what they mean – to you they’re just epithets you employ in place of saying nigger.
You don’t know anything about history, the constitution or anything else but that doesn’t stop you from being loud and proud and showing the world that you’re fucked-in-the-head wrong about everything.
Anyone you drooling imbeciles from Sisterfuck, Tennessee decide to get behind will be utterly crushed in the general election and you pathetic, racist, xenophobic Christopaths will cry great salty tears into your soiled Pampers about how you were sold out again; how the RINOs forced a candidate who just wasn’t Conservative ENOUGH to appeal to all those REAL ‘Mercans who are absolutely out there hating the gays and wishing the darkies would stop sucking up all your tax dollars. Meanwhile, as your Republican governors continue to privatize and destroy your local economies, the rest of America will continue to prop up your broke, redneck, Wal-Mart wheelie cart riding asses.

What Charlie Pierce calls Tiger Beat on the Potomac has a very serious bit on how concerned is the Republican brain trust that Donald Trump will hurt the party’s appeal with women and minorities – that his bombastic attacks on everyone and everything will damage the eventual candidate (which, of course, could never be Donald because Republicans are serious people).
They are especially worried that his plastic popularity and name recognition will earn him a spot on the debate stage.

“But as of now, he would be in — over 2012 Republican runner-up Rick Santorum, who won 11 states and around 4 million votes last cycle; over John Kasich, the popular Ohio governor of a key swing state; over South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, a leading foreign policy voice in the field; and over Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, known as a policy wonk…He’d also make it in over Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard CEO whom the party establishment desperately wants on the debate stage. Fiorina has earned strong reviews from early-state activists, and party insiders say her inclusion in the debate is critical — both to demonstrate the GOP’s diversity and to help male candidates find the right tone in connecting with female voters.”

In what universe is Rick Santorum described as 2012 runner-up instead of a giant theocratic dick with a snowball’s chance in hell of anything?
John Kasich is running because everyone else is and, hell, why not?
Lindsay Graham is a pants wetting panic button with his tongue drilled up the backdoor of the Senator who created Palin.
Bobby Jindal…a policy wonk? Gentlemen, put down the peyote.
Carly Fiorina is a complete failure in business, electoral politics, truth telling, and is only welcomed by the GOP to deflect accurate charges of rampant sexism in their attacks on Hillary Clinton. As a secondary benefit, her presence in the debates will allegedly prevent the other candidates from using terms like, “Broads,” “Skirts,” or, “The women folk,” when pushing policies to restrict or ban abortion even in cases of rape or incest.

Leaving aside for the moment Trump’s unmatched ability to be a blithering, loud-mouthed shnook of truly epic proportions, what is it that troubles Politico? Is it his calling all Mexicans rapists and drug dealers? Nope:

In recent months, he’s said that Fiorina got “fired viciously” from HP and “got clobbered” in her 2010 California Senate loss to Barbara Boxer (she lost by 10 points.) He’s ripped Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as “very weak” on immigration. He’s called Jeb Bush “an unhappy person” and said he “couldn’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag.”

Firstly, in what universe is Donald Trump not the perfect embodiment of the contemporary Republican party?
Blatantly racist, sexist and anti-immigrant while insisting he isn’t; absolutely certain he knows everything, is right about everything and everyone else is a loser. Invents “facts” that suit whatever happens to be oozing out of his yap at the moment. Committed birther who demanded to see the president’s long form birth certificate and then wouldn’t accept the document when offered. Anti-tax, anti-government, anti-environmental protection. Solution to every foreign policy problem – a big stick, “Make them behave.”
Donald Trump is a boasting, fabricating, ignorant, spoiled rotten piece of shit. He is loud and proud and doesn’t care that he is fucked-in-the-head wrong about everything. Donald Trump IS Republican.
The Republicans don’t want him on the debate stage because he reveals the rest of them for what they truly are. The only reason thinking people ought to be concerned is that his presence makes the rest of them appear reasonable by comparison. They are not – not more thoughtful or smart or able to govern…they are not less racist, sexist or homophobic – they’re just less like Foghorn Leghorn and they would prefer Donald stop hollering, “Now, see heah, boy!”

There’s something deeply wrong with Ben Carson. “Being gay is a choice because some people go into prison straight but come out gay.” Clearly some people go into medical school able to learn but come out believing that their ability to wield a scalpel makes every ignorant, backward, unread, thoughtless, condescending, asshole idea that flits through their head worthy of being taken seriously. What an absolute piece of shit.

In a statement to CNN, Carson walked back his assertion. “I realized that my choice of language does not reflect fully my heart on gay issues,” Carson said. “I do not pretend to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation. I regret that my words to express that concept were hurtful and divisive. For that I apologize unreservedly to all that were offended.”

And so we learn that in addition to being stupid, Ben Carson is a liar. He was perfectly clear. He said being gay is a choice. He was asked to confirm if he meant that and he replied, “Absolutely.” ABSOLUTELY. CHOICE. It is of no value whatsoever to pretend to apologize for offending people by saying what he really thinks, or to walk it back ever so slightly by admitting that he doesn’t KNOW how people come to their sexual orientation (Pro tip: No one KNOWS how anyone comes to their sexual orientation.) The story here is that Ben Carson, in the complete absence of any valid information upon which to have an opinion (and worse that that, vomiting forth the stunningly ridiculous and intellectually shameful prison hypothetical), arrogantly asserts his completely ignorant opinion as ABSOLUTE fact, and supports policies that treat homosexuality as if it were abnormal, socially undesirable, and undeserving of equality under the law. I don’t know how this puffed up asshole ever managed to get admitted to medical school but given the demonstrations of his non-medical capacities, all I have to say to the Republican party is, “Keep going. You’re going great!”

These venal assholes will sacrifice even the appearance of doing their job, while putting god bothering, science denying morons like Inhofe in charge of the environment, in order to make another petulant, stubborn, childish fucking attempt to roll back any gain that helps anyone not named Koch, or fails to hew to their imbecilic, ignorant Conservative principles – principles that plainly amount to being willfully stupid and throwing tantrums when they don’t get to actually do the brainless goddamn things they promised Cletus and the rest of the Klan in Sisterfuck, Arkansas in order to get his snake handling ass off the porch and into a voting booth.

“The cops have every reason to be pissed off this morning,” Scarborough said. He argued that the five players on the St. Louis Rams who raised their arms in solidarity with Ferguson on Sunday based their gesture on “lies” that contradicted findings of a grand jury investigation.
…
“And by the way, if I’ve offended anybody by saying what I’ve said, trust me, 95 percent of America think just like me,” he said. “Just because there are cowards who won’t say that on TV… that’s their problem, not mine,” said Scarborough.

Joe Scarborough has never been a smart man. His “Center right” cardigans button up over a pathetically weak mind operating from within a set of Dunning-Kruger level partisan presumptions. He’s a giant bag of dicks who somehow managed to get elected to congress and is now paid ridiculous amounts of money to daily ooze his condescension all over large blocks of time on our public airwaves.

Joe seems to know how offensive is the shit oozing from the inverted anus he calls a mouth. He attempts to inflate his credibility by admitting that his words are certain to offend and asserting that 95% of the population agrees with him. This is nothing more than self-stroking speculation. Even if it were true that the vast majority of Americans agree with his ignorant fantasies, it would only amount to argumentum ad populum. The truth would be that 95% of Americans are uneducated, racist know-nothings who are completely fucking wrong.
He then arrogantly labels anyone who doesn’t publicly admit that they agree with him a coward. This is cheap and shabby ad hominem. Think about what Scarborough is saying here: only cowards stand up for the weak against the power structure that has oppressed them for 300 years. Only cowards question the result of a blatantly rigged legal process that was inverted 180 degrees from its historical AND contemporary purpose.
Joe Scarborough – brave, smart and speaking for the silent massive majority who are just too…something…to say what only Joe has the sack to say – the singular voice willing to speak the POPULAR truth. The greasy little moron and his unwarranted pride in his own imagined genius fucking nauseates me.

The problem with all of this is that, in addition to being racist on its face, Joe doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about.

Firstly, a grand jury – to flog a soundly beaten and long dead horse – is supposed to examine the evidence for a singular purpose: to determine whether or not there ought to be a trial; whether there is ANY evidence that would require taking the matter before a trial judge.
They are impaneled by a prosecutor who is presumed to WANT an indictment and who will argue that the evidence supports that outcome. He will usually direct the jury’s attention to the evidence supporting an indictment and request that they return a charge appropriate to the facts.
This is NOT what happened in Ferguson. The grand jury in Ferguson did not investigate a goddamn thing. Grand juries have, in theory, the ability to perform investigatory functions but this one, in fact, did not.
It heard the evidence presented to it by the prosecutor – evidence which was collected during an investigation conducted by various entities. It examined that evidence ONLY in the light in which the prosecution presented it – no alternative arguments, no cross-examination, no alternative theories.

Secondly, as noted in my previous post, the conduct of the prosecutor in Ferguson, Missouri didn’t even distantly orbit anything remotely resembling a proper grand jury, much less meet the duty of his office or the laws of the United States. The only way it could have been more corrupt, the outcome more rigged, would be if the verdict had been rendered at gunpoint.
Incriminating evidence was cross-examined as though the prosecutors were employed by Darren Wilson – the target of the grand jury.
Exculpatory evidence – which grand juries are not entitled to hear and prosecutors are not obligated to present – was casually submitted with absolutely no critical analysis.
An assistant prosecutor misdirected the jury with regard to the applicable law.
The lead prosecutor didn’t even request that the jury return an indictment – he let those untrained citizens think their job was to decide if the shooting was justified!
This is nonfeasance, misfeasance AND malfeasance all wrapped up in, “Just doin’ my job.”

And yet, here’s the blathering white bread asshole Scarborough, backed up by his brainless sidekick (a pure talent hire who is only coincidentally the daughter of a former Secretary of State), and supposedly countered on the left by an even bigger yammering douche nozzle who is only too eager to jam his tongue up Scarborough’s ass to signal his complete agreement with a series of deep-cleaning reptilian licks.

“Michael Brown was a thug.”
That’s NOTHING but character assassination – an attempt to divert attention from the cheap three card monte scam he’s running on his “It’s OK to be racist if you just keep insisting you’re not” teevee program.

Joe Scarborough is an ignorant, lying, racist piece of shit. It may be the case that 95% of America agrees with him. That would explain much.

I have always enjoyed argument and viewed it more as a pastime – a sport – than anything to be avoided.
The exchange of reasoned ideas supported by evidence of varying kind and quality. Like chess, no one gets to say they got a bad bounce or that the sun was in their eyes. Debate doesn’t come with those sorts of excuses for poor results (although, it is well noted that in the orgies of idiocy one commonly stumbles into on facebook, fan interference produces some ugly moments).

Premise: All of us believe very many wrong things.
Some more than others – there are people out there who are wrong about almost every single thing they believe short of their name…and they might be lying about that, too. But the ubiquity of stupidity is the point, not its varying depths. We’re all wrong about some things.
I tend to take great pains over this seemingly simple truth…usually by not making any claims.
There is a difference between making a positive case for a proposition X, and pointing out that the case being made for Y is a ridiculous fantasy cobbled together out of bullshit, lies and foolishness.

This commonly results in various forms of straw man: “Oh, you don’t like my Libertarian FREEDOM!, so therefore you must be a full-on stooge of full government control of everything!”
No…not really…I’m just pointing out what a moron YOU are.

THAT, of course, leads to accusations of ad hominem. So, before we go any further, allow me to clear that up.
Ad hominem (literally “At the man”) is a logical fallacy in which one attacks the person making the argument RATHER THAN the argument itself.
It takes the form, broadly speaking, of, “He is a stupid and bad man, so his argument (which I have not addressed) must also be stupid and bad.”
This must be contrasted with taking the time to specifically address the argument, shred it to fucking pieces, demonstrate beyond any question that it is premised on bullshit, and THEN calling the person who constructed it a mendacious, wrongheaded twat.
THAT AIN’T AD HOMINEM. That is calling a spade a spade.

The foregoing is merely a quick glance at the SORTS of stupid…the depth of the stupid is also a real and quantifiable thing.
There is a significant difference in degree between these two positions with regard to “questions” about September 11, 2001:

1. “I’m not sure we’re being told the whole story about what happened on 9/11. I have doubts about the official explanation.”
2. “The official explanation is a lie and the laws of physics prove it! Because they lied, I know it was a controlled demolition / inside job which the same laws of physics also proves!”

You can have a reasonable conversation with the first one.
For some purely masochistic reason I refuse to examine too closely, I cannot leave the second one alone.
And it doesn’t matter whether they are Truthers, Birthers, anti-abortionists, god wallopers, gun nuts, Republicans, Libertarians, Left-Wing Purity Police, Glenn Greenwald fanbois, anti-vaccers, creationists, racists, xenophobes, homophobes, David Brooks, Sarah Palin…I loathe stupid.
I simply cannot resist stabbing insistent public imbecility, willful blindness, and that damned Dunning-Kruger Effect degree of completely unwarranted certainty that they actually know what they’re talking about.
For me, stupid people might as well be slathering themselves in bacon grease and running around the garbage dump outside Churchill, Manitoba.
If you didn’t catch the reference, google “Polar Bear Capital of Canada.”

There are some specific examples that stand out:
One particularly knowledgeable chap asserted (among so very many outright lies) that Indian Reservations were created as reparations for past wrongs.
Now, one can view the creation of reservations in many ways, but their creation by treaty between sovereign nations (for good or ill) is an absolute conceptual denial that they could be seen as having been CREATED (as opposed to held back…or, you know RESERVED) or that they were in any way related to reparations for crimes that had not even been acknowledged and, for the most part, have yet to be so acknowledged, much less that any “Reparations” might be due.
He did not retract, modify or even acknowledge the error…by which term I am being kind, especially in view of his immediate progression into the casual claim to know what is best for Those People; how they need to get off their sovereign land and integrate into the community that murdered their ancestors, inflicted residential schools on generations and continues to socially and economically oppress them.
Ah…smart white people – where would Natives be without them?

In another thread, the same insightful fellow posited that corporate charity could and should be the source of all social welfare monies…because corporations, despite their ill-deserved reputation, are really very generous and caring.
He posted links to show that corporate giving is $16 BILLION per year! Do you see? Are you not thankful? If we would just stop taxing those generous, loving corporations, why…they would give more!
Analysis of his own data showed that corporate giving to “Charity” amounted to 16 billion. He was unable to explain how donations to Ducks Unlimited, the Texas 4H-Club, Americans for Prosperity and The Heritage Foundation equated with the social safety net.
Further analysis revealed that corporate charity amounts to 5% of ALL charitable giving – vastly greater sums coming from trusts and endowments, and (leading the pack!) individual, private donors – people like you kicking in $10 or $20. This, of course, has nothing to do with the social safety net. After we subtract all of the Ducks and wetlands and Pandas, the anti-Obamacare organizations, Sean Hannity’s scam off the children of fallen soldiers which exists to provide Sean Hannity with private planes and expensive hotel rooms…after all that “Charitable giving”, some money winds up in church soup kitchens and food banks which are just a wee bit fucking overwhelmed by demand.
Almost effortless additional googling turns up the annual cost of the social safety net, which is not “Well-funded” or “Comprehensive” by any measure and through which far too many slip: $650 billion dollars per year.
The brilliant defender of corporate largess was unable to explain where the other SIX HUNDRED AND FORTY BILLION DOLLARS might come from…but lower taxes for generous corporations was still the only way to fly.

In yet ANOTHER thread…in which he had a problem with Building 7 falling at the speed of gravity (which, I kept explaining to him, is how fast things FALL)…he asserted that GRAVITY affects different material in different ways.
Now, keep in mind, the point at issue – the nut he wanted to crack – is that Building 7 fell at “Free fall speed”.
I granted that it did, because that is how things fall when there is nothing holding them up.
He kept insisting that it should not have done that.
“Why should it not have done that?”
Because there was something impeding it.
“What, specifically, was ‘impeding’ it?”
*crickets*

I provided an analogy: a skateboarder’s shin snaps – he doesn’t fall slowly as the skin and muscle fight to continue holding up what the bone can no longer support.
The brilliant truther started screaming that I know NOTHING about science, engineering, physics, the laws of gravity…that I was stupid. How could I not know that GRAVITY AFFECTS DIFFERENT MATERIALS DIFFERENTLY? Did I really expect that GRAVITY affects sheets of glass and large piece of steel the same way it affects a human body?
Well, yes…in fact, I do.

I explained gravity to him. How it’s a constant. How in 1589 Galileo dropped some stuff from the Leaning Tower of Pisa and sorted that bit out…and how most elementary school children know this.
Now comes the BEST part…
This fellow, who had repeatedly insisted on his expertise in design, engineering, construction, infrastructure, Native American history, economics, politics, civil rights (trust me…these specific examples barely scratch the surface) while asserting my stone ignorance in ALL things, accused me of putting words in his mouth:
OF COURSE he understands gravity…
…what he was REALLY talking about was how different materials respond to the force of IMPACT after they have fallen…
…remember that television commercial in which they drop a real pick-up truck and a TONKA truck from the same height and the pick-up truck is destroyed but the TONKA truck is only dented? See? The force of impact depends on the materials involved, and THAT’S what he really meant…
…and if I weren’t such a foul-mouthed, unreasonable, stupid know-nothing, I would KNOW that!

I did point out to him that the way different materials respond to impact doesn’t have ANYTHING to do with how fast they fall…which was, I had thought, the issue. I didn’t point out that the differing MASS of the pick-up truck and the TONKA truck might have had something to do with force of impact…but I didn’t want to stray farther into science, about which I know nothing.
But if I were arguing about how fast things are SUPPOSED to fall, I would certainly consider what happens to them on impact to be a determining factor. Sure I would. Because it makes perfect sense. How could I not know that? I guess I need to bone up on that science stuff.
…..

Thus far, I have restricted my comments to the nature, quality and degree of the sorts of stupidity one is likely to encounter when strolling about hunting for it; the sort of insistent, wrongheaded pathology that accompanies it.
There is another facet I would like to note.
There are a couple of assumptions that people make about how debate ought to be conducted. The first of these seems to follow, incorrectly in my view, from the principle that everyone has a right to their opinion – freedom of thought and freedom of speech. The false step that often follows is the assumption that everyone’s opinion is just as good as anyone else’s. “You say X, I say Y…it’s a coin flip.”
Bullshit.

If I need an operation, the opinion of my doctor outweighs that of my motorcycle mechanic. The reverse is true should I require piston rings.
Questions of evidence, expertise, experience, reason, history, bias and many other qualities come into significant play when assessing the value of any opinion.
That one HAS an opinion in no way obligates anyone else to take it seriously, or gives it ANY inherent value.

The other assumption people seem to make is that they deserve to be treated respectfully when they parade around in public spouting outright lies, stubbornly refusing to engage facts, reason and evidence in favour of insistent repetition of their paranoid fever dreams and giving snotty, condescending responses to anyone who happens to point out that, you know, the laws of physics they’ve been lecturing everyone about don’t work the way they think.

I understand the reasonable protocol of not calling someone a “Brainless, ignorant fuckwit with their head jammed so goddamn far up their own ass they need a glass belly button,” right off the drop (except in egregious cases)…but when it reaches the point where some god walloping anti-science piece of shit starts blathering about AIDS being god’s punishment for the homo-sek-shuls, I stop caring whether they care for my fucking tone.

When some stunningly ignorant, casual hatesac Libertarian starts telling me that I can trust the FREE MARKET to stamp out any “No Colored” signs that appear in Mississippi because, of course, that would cost the restaurant all of their business…you explain to me why they SHOULDN’T be asked when they get their fucking Klan sheets back from the cleaners.

I’m fucking well tired of a bunch a lobotomy survivors telling me they don’t like my tone; that my salty language offends their delicate, Nancy-boy sensibilities…but they have no trouble pulling themselves up from the fainting couch to bawl like a spoiled tween over my horrible language while refusing to address the awesome pus-soaked brainlessness that provoked it.

I don’t need anger management…they need stupid management.
And anyone who thinks they have a fucking right NOT to be offended can kiss my ass. Twice.

You don’t like being called a stupid, lying, ignorant fuckwit in public?
Stop telling blatant lies and making insistent claims that ooze infectious stupid IN PUBLIC.

When you climb up on the soapbox, squat and proudly take a giant shit, don’t expect a fucking pat on the head.

From Buzzfeed: An Oklahoma company has designed a bullet-resistant blanket that’s designed to protect children and teachers in the event of a school shooting.

“Yeah, I’m Tony…from the bullet proof blanket company Protek UR Tot. This sure is a nice school you got here. Be a real shame if someone was to, you know, shoot the place up or somethin’. You know how easy it is to get a gun these days? Piece of cake. I got one right here…look. I got three more in the car. All perfectly legal – can youse believe it? Anyways, what you got here?…400 kids? So, how’s about I put you down for that?”

This is a very good idea. It prevents the kids from running and hiding and having to find them. This way, they’ll be lined up on the floor, camouflaged under bright orange blankets.
It’s like playing Whack-A-Mole.